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While the war in Europe was winding down, Roosevelt knew the United States still faced a protracted struggle against Japan in the Pacific War, and wanted to confirm Soviet support in an effort to limit the length of and casualties sustained in that conflict.
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At the Tehran Conference, the United States and Britain had committed to launching an invasion of northern France in mid-1944, opening another front of the war against Nazi Germany. Stalin, meanwhile, had agreed in principle to join the war against Japan in the Pacific after Germany was defeated.
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At Yalta, the Big Three agreed that after Germany’s unconditional surrender, it would be divided into four post-war occupation zones, controlled by U.S., British, French and Soviet military forces. The city of Berlin would also be divided into similar occupation zones. France’s leader, Charles de Gaulle, was not invited to the Yalta Conference, and Stalin agreed to include France in the post-war governing of Germany only if France’s zone of occupation was taken from the US and British zones.
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Many Americans criticized Roosevelt — who was seriously ill during the Yalta Conference and died just two months later, in April 1945 — for the concessions he made at Yalta regarding Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia. President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, would be far more suspicious of Stalin that July, when the leaders of the Big Three Allied powers met again at the Potsdam Conference in Germany to hash out the final terms for ending World War II in Europe.
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At Yalta, Stalin agreed to Soviet participation in the United Nations, the international peacekeeping organization that Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to form in 1941 as part of the Atlantic Charter. He gave this commitment after all three leaders had agreed on a plan whereby all permanent members of the organization’s Security Council would hold veto power.
